


Walls

by Winterstar



Series: Sins of the Day [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Graphic Description, M/M, Multiple Personalities, PTSD, Psychological Trauma, Rape/Non-con Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-27
Updated: 2014-06-27
Packaged: 2018-02-06 10:00:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1853872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winterstar/pseuds/Winterstar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are walls built to serve as barriers for a reason. Steve copes, but not well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Walls

**Author's Note:**

> A series of vignettes about the breakdown and strength of characters as they try and put their lives back together again.

Walls, they explain to him. In dry monotone voices, the doctors in their white coats review the chart and tell him that the man he knew as James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes has split into two different personas. He’s built walls to protect himself, they say. The torture he’d been through fragmented his personality and caused him to do whatever he could as a method of self-preservation. 

So, they explain about walls. He’s constructed a mental building or fortress where Bucky Barnes cannot see the Winter Soldier and the Winter Soldier cannot see Bucky Barnes. The two don’t know the other exists. This is a way for him to keep sane, they tell Steve. This is a way for him to survive.

Steve takes it in stride, nods when they ask him if he understands, and then the doctor quizzes him on his mental state. They want to know about how it feels, how Steve’s handling everything. He keeps his voice low-key, his answers even and thoughtful. He tells them everything, but he tells them nothing. He recognizes the glossy look in their eyes; they either don’t believe him or they are so bored and disinterested they are drifting off to somewhere else. While he hopes it is the latter, he fears it is the former. 

If they delve too deep, they might discover the walls he’s built. Not walls of mortar or brick, but walls of strength, endurance, pain, suffering, blood, and hopelessness. If they dig, and he knows they will, they might find out that Bucky’s walls are only so high and that Steve witnessed it, Steve knows more than he wants to admit.

He doesn’t say anything about it when they query about what happened. He tells them the barest of details. He steers clear of the truth.

The walls are punctured and crumbled and no one really cares. He sits with his hands together, stuffed between his knees because if he doesn’t they might shake. He cannot let anyone see it. He wants to forget, but the walls all have holes, every single one of the walls. 

Holes allow the echoes through so that he can hear the whispers of yesterday.

“Can you walk?” Bucky had asked.

He laid crumpled in the corner of the shack. Steve’s not sure how they got here or how long they’ve been in the dilapidated house. There’s only half a roof, the other side is caved in over what might have been a coal chute. When he first saw it, it brought back memories of other times, happier times he’d been with Bucky. 

“Come on, can you walk?” Bucky asked again, his eyes frantic. “We have to get out of here before he comes back.”

Steve struggled to sit up, his ribs rebelled and he cradled his broken arm around his abdomen. He forced himself to sit up and leaned against the moldy wall of the house. There had been pealing wallpaper with faded tiny pink roses decorating his hell. He closed his eyes as he tried to find a way to tell Bucky it’s impossible.

“He’s coming back. Come on, Steve, you gotta get up.”

It occurred to him that what Bucky was saying made no sense. “Who? Who?”

“Damn it, I don’t have time for your shenanigans. The one who hurt you, you know that one who beat the crap out of you.” Bucky reached out and tried to touch Steve’s bruised face but Steve, instinctively shied away. “Hey, hey now, I’m not going to hurt you. I’m not him. I promise you, Steve. You know me.”

It was true. He did know Bucky. So he trusted Bucky. “Okay, help me up.”

As soon as Bucky slid an arm under Steve’s shoulder to hoist him to his feet, something shifted in his expression, flittering over it, shifting like shadows on a wall. He changed, became something different, something less. 

Steve tries to slip away from the memory as the doctor sitting across from him in the small office drones on about how their sessions will go, how much he’ll be allowed to visit Bucky, that he thinks that Tony should accompany Steve eventually but not right now. Not with how things are, what state things are in right now. Maybe they should consider couples counseling. Eventually. As the words burble out of his mouth, Steve cannot stop the memory from taking over, from encompassing him, assailing him.

Instead of hauling Steve to his feet, the Winter Soldier struck out and gripped Steve’s throat with his metal hand, fingers crushing his trachea, leaving imprints on already tender flesh. His eyes had gone from concerned to furious and he snarled at Steve. “Tell me what they did to me, you son of a bitch. Tell me what they did.”

Steve tried to reason with him. He wasn’t even sure how long or how many times he tried, but nothing broke through the hell that the Winter Soldier lived.

“You tell me or, so help me, I will break you.”

Steve knew he was already broken, the threat meant nothing. 

“I’m not going to fight you, Bucky. You’re not him, you’re not their assassin. You’re my friend.”

“Shut the fuck up,” the Winter Soldier yelled in his face, spittle sprayed into Steve’s eyes and hair. He banged Steve’s head against the hard wooden floor. “You want to see what kind of friend I am. You son of a bitch.” He squeezed tighter, causing the air flow to stop and the world to funnel and narrow into a swimming darkness. 

Trying to bring his hand up to stop him, Steve grappled but the press of the Winter Soldier’s body against too many of his broken bones made it impossible for him to fight effectively. With a swift motion, the Winter Soldier slammed Steve’s head several more times until Steve’s vision blurred.

“You’ll see what kind of friend I am,” the Winter Soldier said and then he muttered something in Russian that Steve did not catch. He tugged away the rags of Steve’s uniform, exposing him and then unbuckled his own pants. Before Steve protested, the Winter Soldier spat on his hand for lube and used it on his prick before he shoved into Steve without preparation.

The spearing hot pain struck him through, and he cried out. The raw burn of it brought nothing but searing agony as the Winter Soldier thrust into him, body pounding against him, brutal and efficient. When he came and the hot semen poured into Steve, he didn’t seem at all satisfied just empty and hollow and when he pulled out, he glared at Steve with such hatred it shocked him. He took it out on Steve, the rape had only been the beginning that night instead of the end like it had been most of the time of his incarceration. The rape marked the beginning and as the night wore on Steve understood how to build walls.

When the doctor finished he asks Steve, “Do you have any questions, Captain Rogers?”

Steve doesn’t smile because he knows if he does they’ll think it is fake and that he isn’t taking the therapy seriously. He learned this when he came out of the ice. “Yes.”

“And that would be?” The doctor asks and readjusts his wire framed glasses.

“When can I see my husband again?”

“Do you think you could handle that?”

Steve shifts and thinks the chair, although cushioned, is too straight and hard lined to offer comfort. “I would like to be with my husband.”

“The last time you saw Mister Stark you were more than a little upset.”

“The last time I saw Tony, I was still healing. I’m feeling better, I want to go home, and be with Tony.”

“And do you think that’s wise?”

“Why are you asking me that?” Steve says and stands up. “I don’t have to stay here. I’m here voluntarily.”

The doctor, a tall lanky man, stands up and agrees, “That’s true, but you asked to stay here for more than just Bucky Barnes recuperation.”

Steve looks away, his thoughts torn, his mind twisted.

“It wasn’t just Bucky and you weren’t just healing when you saw Mister Stark last, Captain Rogers. Isn’t that true?”

He wants the doctor to go away, he wants the serum to work its miracles. But the serum can’t help him forget, and the serum can’t heal his psyche, and the serum has left its own scars on Steve’s mind. 

“What happened the last time you saw Mister Stark?”

Steve coughs and says, “I hit him.”

“And.”

“I threw him through a wall,” Steve says and chokes on the truth. He’s not fit to be Captain America, and he’s damn well not fit to be Tony’s husband. 

“I know you want to move on, Captain Rogers, but the truth is you’re not ready. The truth is, you’ve had a break, and you need to heal. You need to give your body and your mind time to heal.” The doctor’s eyes are not unkind, but they are not inviting, they do not welcome. They are analytical with a touch of tenderness that comes with wisdom and age. 

“I’m ready to move on, I want to move on. I want to go home,” Steve says, but he sinks into the chair. “But I can’t, can I?”

“What do you think, Captain?”

“I think you should stop calling me that,” Steve says. “I think we all have our walls, and some walls can’t be scaled and other walls are invisible and other walls don’t mean a thing.”

“Why do you think I shouldn’t call you Captain anymore?”

“I’m no more Captain America than Bucky’s the Winter Soldier,” Steve says. “At least Bucky has an excuse for what --.” He swallows back the words but they are like the metal grip to his throat, punishing. “I don’t have an excuse. I’m not fit for the name.”

The doctor sits in the chair opposite Steve and says as he leans forward, “That is where you are wrong, Captain. You’re only human, you can only suffer so much before you break.”

“I can deal with breaking, Doctor, I just can’t deal with the consequences.” Steve looks away from the doctor. He’s right, the man in the white coat is right. Steve can’t go home. He needs walls. He need psychological walls and real brick and mortar walls. He needs a cage to be locked in and the key to be thrown away. He needs walls around him, over him. He needs to be walled in so that he can scream, and scream, and scream.

THE END

**Author's Note:**

> follow me on [tumbler](http://winterstar95.tumblr.com)


End file.
